So You Want to Be in Pictures? : Harder for some people than others; enter now Disney Studios

For the Walt Disney Studios, it’s no Mickey Mouse move. The Burbank company is launching an ambitious new program with special emphasis on developing more minority and women writers into “first-rate screenwriters.”

This step in the right direction may open up creative opportunities behind the camera to minority writers who feel shut out of the system because of sex or ethnicity. Disney’s commitment is the biggest by any Hollywood studio to date. Let’s hope other studios will followsuit.

The Walt Disney Fellowship Program begins next month. The first participants will include 27 aspiring screenwriters--most of them African-American, Latino, Asian-American and female writers ranging in age from 20 to 46. They will participate in a yearlong program, earning an annual salary of $30,000. They will work and train on developing film and television projects for four Disney production units: Hollywood Pictures, Touchstone Pictures, Walt Disney Pictures and Walt Disney Productions.

Disney’s move was not entirely altruistic. The company ranked at the bottom in surveys of job opportunities for minority writers conducted by the Writers Guild of America West in 1987 and 1989.

But Disney’s effort is unprecedented in the number of writers and length of commitment. Studios generally have employed minority writers only sporadically. Last month, the Beverly Hills/Hollywood Chapter of the National Assn. for the Advancement of Colored People issued a report noting there were fewer opportunities for blacks in Hollywood executive suites now than 10 years ago.

Disney’s program is likely to earn kudos from civil rights groups and the Writers Guild. The hiring and training of minority and women writers will create greater diversity behind and before the camera. They will add a new perspective in both product and roles. If they help to eliminate stereotypical Hollywood characterizations of minorities, Disney will again have helped make Hollywood history.